• Most people aren’t held back by a lack of knowledge, opportunity, health, wealth, or wellbeing.

    The single barrier blocking most of us is fear.

    Fear tells you:

    • keep everything under control
    • be safe
    • don’t be too vulnerable
    • limit risk
    • don’t dream
    • don’t trust
    • don’t get your hopes up

    It stunts our ability to grow, lead, and impact the people around us.

    And it’s very subtle. It comes from past hurts and it waits beneath the surface for years.

    We get hurt, then we isolate, then we hold onto the pain because it feels like something we deserved.

    Unknowingly, we feed fear.

    But at the root of fear is something much sneakier – the need for control.

    See, the fruit of fear is easy to spot:

    • Anger
    • Stress
    • Worry
    • Feelings of insignificance
    • So on and so forth

    But you’ll notice that these pop up whenever things feel out of control.

    Control feels safe, so we learn to chase it. 

    When we realize we can’t have it – because we can never truly have full control of anything in life – the body goes into fight or flight.

    This is the essence of anxiety.

    It’s caused by unthrottled and mismanaged thoughts about situations that are outside of our control.

    This is also the cycle of fear. 

    What we do with the desire for control is what will determine whether or not fear grows inside of us.

    We can do one of two things:

    1. Be willing to sit with the discomfort of what’s uncontrollable without trying to fix it (which is REALLY difficult)
    2. Run in circles chasing a solution until our brains go haywire with stress, anxiety, and panic

    Unresolved pain will always lead us to option B.

    A person with an open wound has to give up control to a doctor to get healed. 

    Hiding the wound until it gets infected would cause unnecessary pain, anger, fear, and irrational behavior.

    Fighting for control usually leads to the opposite of what you want.

    Release is simple, yet counter-intuitive:

    Practice release in the small, mundane things, and start storing up positive outcomes.

    “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart…” (Luke 6:45)

    Memories drive behavior.

    Give your brain micro-experiences of releasing control throughout your day, and start storing up positive outcomes (not all will be positive, so more reps are better).

    With a memory bank of positive outcomes, releasing control will feel less and less like a death sentence.

    And over time, you’ll see that life and healing go hand in hand with release.

  • One day a psychology professor stepped in front of her class, filled a glass full of water, and raised it where everyone could see.

    The professor asked, “How heavy is this glass of water I’m holding?”

    Students shouted out answers ranging from eight ounces to a couple pounds. 

    The professor then replied, “From my perspective, the absolute weight of this glass doesn’t matter. It all depends on how long I hold it.”

    “If I hold it for a minute or two, it’s fairly light.”

    “If I hold it for an hour straight, its weight might make my arm ache a little.”

    “If I hold it for a day straight, my arm will cramp up and go numb, forcing me to drop the glass to the floor.”

    “In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it feels to me.”

    Stresses and worries in life are very much like that glass of water. 

    When carried for short periods of time, they have relatively no effect. 

    But the longer you ruminate, focus on them, and try to hold them without balance and rest, the more they hurt you. 

    At first, you begin to ache a little, but after a while, that same amount of relatively small weight can make you feel completely numb and paralyzed – incapable of doing anything else until you drop them.

    You can carry a lot more than you think – but only when you do it a little at a time. 

  • Driven people with character are dangerous.

    Those people are the ones who create a better world.

    Both are key – drive and character.

    One without the other is like separating sodium from chlorine in sodium chloride, also known as salt.

    These two become salt only when they’re together.

    When separated, both sodium and chlorine are dangerous and volatile.

    If the formula for salt is sodium (Na) + chlorine (Cl), then the formula for building driven people of character – the “salt” of the earth, is this:

    Urgency (to solve an important problem) + Patience (the willingness to work and wait for progress) = Driven People of Character.

    I call it “patient urgency”.

    You must have both urgency and patience.

    Just like sodium and chlorine are harmful on their own, so too are urgency and patience.

    Urgency without patience kills character.

    Patience without urgency kills drive.

    When they come together, though, you get a rare mixture that both preserves and improves everything it touches.

  • There’s a widely-accepted lie in our culture that we sort of blindly embrace.

    It’s like Santa Clause for adults.

    The lie we all willingly believe in is the lie of control.

    The signs of this lie are everywhere:

    • Anger from frustration
    • Fear, anxiety, and worry
    • Stress and sickness
    • Selfishness and disunity

    These are all byproducts of a mind that is set on control but can never find it.

    We decide that our ideal – our “Eden” – is something we can create.

    But God (and the laws of the universe) plan otherwise.

    Here’s where the disconnect comes from:

    We’ve been programmed by modern advancements to believe that everything around us is under our control.

    With one glance at the device in my pocket, I can instantly know what the weather will be like for the next 10 days or more.

    I can instantly get a virtual tour of the Eiffel Tower anytime I want. 

    I can speak with anyone, anywhere on this planet, instantly whenever I decide to.

    No other generation in history has had the level of access and control that we have today.

    Every other generation had to become very comfortable with uncertainty. 

    Before the industrial revolution, families depended on whether cycles to bring them crops. Survival itself depended on elements that were outside of their control.

    They:

    • ate what was available
    • did activities that were available
    • wore what was available
    • worked at jobs that were available
    • used the products and services that were available

    …and they learned to deal with circumstances as they came.

    But now we have options for everything. 

    Jobs, food, clothes, friends, church, entertainment – we have endless choices.

    And a major side effect of a culture filled with options is the misconception that certainty is just within reach.

    But it’s an illusion.

    The best plans can instantly change. 

    Weather patterns get interrupted, family members get sick, jobs cease to exist, and our worlds of comfort and predictability can be stripped away in an instant (consider 2020 for reference).

    When you realize certainty is an illusion, life gets simpler.

    Control, and the desire for certainty, is a form of self-captivity. You’re only stuck because you’re looking for something to hold onto.

    Imagine being stuck inside a jail cell because you won’t let go of the bars.

    But freedom comes from release – letting go of the need for certainty.

    And when you let go, you start to realize that what you were holding onto so desperately was a self-created captivity.

  • Christianity, by the numbers, is fading fast in America.

    That might not be a bad thing.

    Because it’s probably not the real issue.

    Maybe what’s fading is the shiny replica of the Church that we created.

    The one built on polished sermons and impressive stages.

    The one more concerned with attendance than presence.

    The one more concerned with comfort than breakthrough.

    Maybe the world doesn’t hate Jesus. Maybe they just haven’t seen much of him lately.

    What they’ve seen most is a cheap replica – just close enough to fool the untrained eye.

    And they’re not wrong to feel let down.

    Jesus said we’d be known by our love. 

    Yet somehow we’re most known for our judgement.

    It’s no wonder people started walking away.

    Not from God, but from the off-brand version of him we’ve presented.

    Maybe the decline isn’t rejection. Maybe it’s actually a longing.

    Maybe the world is still hungry for Jesus, but they’re done settling for what we’ve been serving.

    Jesus never said to build churches. He said to make disciples.

    He said to take up your cross, not your platform.

    The early Church looked very different.

    They shared everything they had willingly.

    We get mad if anyone talks about money in church.

    They met together every single day.

    We show up twice a month when it’s convenient.

    They broke bread in their homes and centered their lives around communion.

    We go to a small group every couple weeks and sip juice from plastic cups once a quarter.

    They prayed constantly.

    We say formulaic, surface level prayers and only in the transitions in the service.

    They were known for their conviction and love for one another.

    We’re known for condemnation.

    They were united.

    We’re divided in every way imaginable.

    People noticed them and they grew.

    People are noticing us and we’re shrinking.

    The difference is stark.

    Maybe we need to stop asking how to get people back into church and start asking how to get the Church back into people.

    Because the world is tired of the show.

    And good for them.

    They want to be seen. To be healed. To be loved. To encounter something real.

    And if they can’t find that in us, then maybe we’re the ones who’ve gone missing.

  • One of the most interesting aspects of nature is the phenomenon of adaptation. 

    When we look at the universe, one fundamental truth is evident:

    Where you abide is what you become.

    For example, there are frogs in certain parts of the world who, because their environment is so cold, are able to actually freeze over half of their bodies to protect themselves from the frigid temperatures. 

    There are also fish like the cuttlefish who are able to adapt to their environment by camouflaging themselves to look like coral or other elements around them so they can survive.

    There are tons of examples in nature of plants and animals that have adapted to their environment, and there have also been study after study showing that humans behave in the same way.

    For example, studies have found that whenever an individual with mild opinions about a topic gets into a group where the opinions on that topic are more extreme than theirs, the individual is more likely to come out of that group with more extreme viewpoints.

    In another experiment, a national park had been using a sign to prevent theft that said, “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.”

    By removing the sign, theft actually decreased by one-third. 

    The implication is that the sign, which was intended to cause the visitor to feel aware and ashamed for the theft, actually served as social proof and made them feel as though it was an environment conducive to theft.

    Time and time again, observations of science and nature show that it’s your environment that has the greatest impact on your behavior. 

    Jesus taught this concept to his followers. 

    He had a peculiar way of “converting” people to his way of thinking. 

    Instead of trying to convince them, he simply invited them to be around him. 

    He had meals with them and taught them bite-size lessons in the midst of him traveling and healing and loving people.

    Then he said this to give us a clue as to what he was up to:

    “Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be.” (John 12:26)

    Catch that – wherever he IS, his servant will also be. 

    It wasn’t so much that his servants would try to mimic him; it was that they would be with him, in his environment.

    Then he spelled it out even clearer for us when he said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

    Notice what he asked of them: to simply be with him and abide in him.

    Not to do a list of things, become a better version of themselves, or become something they weren’t.

    Just abide – meaning to remain – in him, completely engulfed in the environment and culture he created.

    The implications are simple yet profound:

    Environment is everything.

    But that’s not how we usually think about it.

    When we have a problem, we look for the information that’s going to help us solve it. 

    We look for the solution, when most of the time, our solution has more to do with where we’re spending time – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually – than anything we can do directly.

    But think about this:

    The quickest way to melt an ice cube isn’t to break it into a million pieces. The quickest way to melt an ice cube is to place it in hot water.

    Find a better environment before you look for answers.

    Sometimes just being in the right place with the right people is the right answer.

    And it’s not because you’re better at solving your problems. It’s because you’re finally in the right places focusing on the right things.

    Because where you abide is what you become.